I was reluctant to watch Mrs., Arati Kadav’s Hindi remake of Jeo Baby’s Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen, after having been disappointed by Bollywood’s adaptation of many South Indian movies.
For instance, in Kabir Singh (2019), which was a remake of the Telugu film Arjun Reddy (2017), the female lead is shown as more submissive. And the caste angle, which is a point of disagreement between the couple’s families is downplayed. Dhadak (2018), which was based on the Marathi film Sairat, also neutralised caste violence by focusing on the class conflict between the families.
It was only for the talented Sanya Malhotra that I decided to watch Mrs. But despite her engaging performance as Richa, a newlywed navigating marital life, the film disappoints by presenting her as a diluted version of the rebellious daughter-in-law played by Nimisha Sajayan in the Malayalam original. In the remake, the frustration of the lead character is softened so much so that her attempt to free herself sounds a little unconvincing.
TGIK, released on OTT at the pandemic’s peak, broke language barriers with its sheer intensity. The message was punchfully delivered with compelling imagery, and it relied on storytelling, using very little background score or music. The protagonist woman is always in the kitchen – either cooking or washing dishes in filthy circumstances, while the men munch on a variety of delicacies.
These scenes were, in themselves, suffocating to watch. Repetitive sequences of household chores became symbolic of the tiring performance of gendered labour in the Indian household.
The film was widely watched by non-Malayalis too, and most viewers seemed to have felt the frustration of the lead female character. But the Hindi version Mrs., streaming on Zee5, is not the same in impact, though the story is similar.
The newlywed protagonist played by Sanya too begins to feel cornered by the rigid patriarchal expectations of her, and starts to resist the system, eventually breaking away from it. However, there is a conspicuous exclusion of how religion and caste intermingle with gender bias within the family, diluting the nuances presented in TGIK.
This pushes one to probe whether such exclusion was to circumvent a possible backlash about “Hindu phobia” and whether southern movie makers feel more free to tell stories without fear when compared to their northern counterparts. Here are a few reasons why Mrs. appears diluted and less compelling in comparison with the original Malayalam film it is based on.
Lack of powerful visual imagery
TGIK has vivid images of rebellion against practices that shackle women in assigned gender roles. For example, mid-way through the film, Nimisha Sajayan is on her laptop applying for a job while the backdrop shows rice cooking on traditional firewood as her father-in-law demands food cooked that way, instead of an instant cooker on a gas stove. The image communicates what is expected of women and how they are compelled to fulfil those expectations as they try to get freedom.
In another scene, Nimisha walks past a group of women protesting the Supreme Court verdict in the Sabarimala temple entry issue, allowing women entry to the temple.
Mrs. merely relies on the background score to show the woman’s emotions while using very limited visual cues of how routine incidents and expectations come together to create a rigid scheme of things for women at home.
Limited reference to religious practices
In TGIK, Nimisha eventually leaves the house when a religious activity is going on. The imagery of the young lady leaving angrily showcases the frustration of how even such ceremonies do not acknowledge women but only add to their labour. In Mrs., the religious angle is hardly present.
When Ruchi too decides to leave, there is no mention of the family’s religious customs. You see her getting angry when family members and guests demand different things. But apart from that, how religious morality strengthens patriarchal bias in the house has been diluted. Given the north Indian context, the karwa chauth ceremony was added to the narrative, but it makes no particular impact.
This pushes one to wonder whether the makers of Mrs. didn’t want to trigger a backlash by critiquing religion and culture by remaking TGIK as it is.
During her menstruation period, Ruchi is merely prevented from going into the kitchen. There is no segregation into another room unlike Nimisha, who is given a separate room and utensils in the original movie. When she mistakenly touches her husband, played by Suraj Venjaramoodu, a priest tells him that eating cow dung can absolve the ‘impure touch’ of a menstruating woman. In Mrs., any reference and orthodox ‘remedies’ are avoided.
Lack of realism
In the Malayalam original, Nimisha’s character has to cook, clean, and keep the house together, making her look sweaty and dishevelled. Though Ruchi says she is smelly, she is presented very elegantly, with barely any sweat drops on her face or clothes. She always wears some make-up and her dresses are brand-new and radiant – despite toiling hard day and night. This takes away the harshness of reality by sanitising the image for aesthetics.
There is one gunny cloth in the original film that Nimisha uses to absorb the leaking water from the kitchen sink pipe to the floor. The gunny cloth eventually starts to increase in number, multiplying the problems the newlywed has to navigate. This is absent in the Hindi version, making the plumbing issue appear less disgusting.
TGIK also has no name for Nimisha’s character, underlining that there is no separate identity to a woman in the house apart from being a daughter-in-law.
Granted, the director can use some liberty to adapt the original, but the omissions here are significant and impact the nuance of the narrative. Ruchi’s frustration, though real, appears much less impactful than Nimisha’s. It appears that the omission of references to religious customs is to play it safe in front of the defenders of “Indian culture”. The end result is that Mrs. ends up losing the original’s soul and substance.
The ending sequences of both films have songs. But there is a stark difference in the lyrics, though both are about women's upliftment.
In TGIK the song is a rebellious call to rise above shackles: “Oh woman, March on, enough of your grief – with your wisdom if you march on, you are a relentless stream, spread across the world…” In the dance sequence choreography, a girl chained by her feet frees herself and finds a chair to sit on.
Compare this to a Hindi song in Mrs. and the subdued Baar Baar appears softer – “We will rise each time and blossom…” – and lacks the revolutionary tonality of the original.
Even in its diluted form, one sees Hindi male audiences criticising Mrs. for being “too feminist”. It is interesting to note here that both versions of the films do not stereotype men. There is a friend of Ruchi’s (and Nimisha’s in the original) whose husband contributes to the kitchen and treats her as an equal. But when it comes to the leading woman, the Hindi adaptation is a diluted story, downplaying the problem to that of an overworked daughter-in-law, as seen in several other films.
The Tamil remake of TGIK, headlined by Aishwarya Rajesh, had the impactful sequences from the Malayalam original, but the Hindi version didn’t seem to want to fish in troubled waters. This underlines south Indian cinema’s realism and points to the fact that perhaps filmmakers down south are more fearless in their creative expressions.
This story was republished from The News Minute as part of the NL-TNM alliance. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.
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